Click to viewLooking for a new job in a struggling economy is hard work. Make it easier on yourself by getting to know the best tools for the task at hand.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite online job search sites, and today we're back with the most popular answers. Keep reading for a detailed breakdown of the best sites around for finding work when you need it.

NOTE: Due to a few ties in the preliminary call for contenders, this Hive Five will actually feature six job search sites.

Monster

Monster.com first opened its doors way back in 1994 (first called The Monster Board), and has since been a very popular destination for employers and employees alike looking to fill and find a job. With over a million job postings and over 150 million resumes at any one time (according to Wikipedia), Monster has one of the largest job search databases available. In addition to its job search and resume posting tools, Monster also offers career advice, a beta tool for researching companies, and more. From the sound of our call for contenders post, many of you have secured or been offered jobs through Monster.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site along the lines of Facebook with an emphasis on building a work-related network. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn quickly became a popular destination for workers looking to build their professional relationships. While LinkedIn isn't primarily a job search destination, the idea is simple enough: People get jobs from their professional network, so rather than digging through enormous search databases when you're looking for work, your LinkedIn network becomes an excellent resource for connecting with people in your field who know where you might be able to get good work.

CareerBuilder

Along with Monster, CareerBuilder is the oldest job search site on the list (founded in 1995). Also like Monster, CareerBuilder's pages boast millions of job postings, hundreds of thousands of employers on the hunt for potential employees, and a whole lot more. Although many commenters have secured jobs from both Monster and CareerBuilder, others have also commented on receiving a fair amount of spam "opportunities" from them as well.

HotJobs

HotJobs is another age-old job search engine that first started in 1996 (under another name), went through a few other changes, and was eventually purchased by Yahoo in 2002. HotJobs is a traditional job search engine cut from a similar cloth as Monster or CareerBuilder. When you head to HotJobs, you're searching a giant database of jobs. Like the other two, you can also post your resume for employers to search and find you. Several commenters point out that the three largest job search engines on this list (Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs) all generally carry a lot of the same job postings, so it's more a matter of choosing which one you feel most comfortable with when you're managing your resume and searching for jobs.

Craigslist

Craigslist is best known for free classified ads that have secured Craigslist power users great deals, but the pages of Craigslist also offer a thriving job board. According to commenters, Craigslist can be especially useful for workers looking for regional work. Before you send out another application through Craigslist, be sure to check out these tips for applying for a job on Craigslist.

Indeed

Job search engine Indeed is a meta-search engine that scours job sites, newspapers, and company career pages for jobs. Matching jobs are fed to you on a familiar Google-style results page. Indeed isn't a full-service job search site where you post your resume and hope for calls from employers, but if you know what kind of work you're looking for, its impressive meta-search (complete with email alerts and RSS feeds) is worth a look. Note: The majority of votes for Indeed were from first-time commenters (which generally means spam), but Indeed still snagged plenty of legitimate votes from satisfied users.